Personal Finances

Overview As Barack Obama begins his second term in office, the public is hearing a mix of good and bad news about the economy, as it has for much of the past four years. Views of news about real estate values and financial markets have improved and are as positive as they have been in […]

The number of Americans who are worried they will not have enough income and assets for retirement is up 13 percentage points since 2009.

Take a look at Pew Research Center’s top findings of the year that told us a bigger story about the trends shaping our world.

I.  Overview Hispanics have grown more satisfied with the nation’s direction and more confident in their finances since 2011, according to a new survey from the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center. Today, half of Latinos (51%) express satisfaction with the direction of the country, a 13 percentage point increase over […]

More than half of adults ages 36 to 40 say they are either “not too” or “not at all” confident that their incomes and assets will last through retirement.

Despite a slowly improving economy and a three-year-old stock market rebound, Americans today are more worried about their retirement finances than they were at the end of the Great Recession in 2009, according to a nationally representative survey of 2,508 adults conducted by the Pew Research Center. About four-in-ten adults (38%) say they are “not […]

About one out of five (19%) of the nation’s households owed student debt in 2010, more than double the share two decades earlier and a significant rise from the 15% that owed such debt in 2007. A record 40% of all households headed by someone younger than age 35 owed student debt in 2010.

The Pew Research Center has published a number of recent reports that are relevant to the new Census Bureau numbers for the 2011 poverty rate, median household income and people without health insurance. This posting lists and links to reports about Americans' attitudes toward their own economic circumstances and views on helping the poor, as well as analysis and explanation about poverty and economic well-being.

This posting describes and links to a new report, "The Lost Decade of the Middle Class," that combines income data from the Census Bureau, wealth data from the Survey of Consumer Finances and findings from a new survey to paint a portrait of diminished finances and muted hopes.

Many borrowers say the burden of paying back student loans has made it harder to pay their bills and make ends meet.